Module 4 – SLP
MANAGING ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE
SLP Assignment
For the Module 4 SLP assignment, think about a significant organizational change that occurred in your workplace. Think carefully about the steps taken by management during the change process, and the organizational change processes and concepts that you read about in the background materials. Then write at least a 2 full-page page paper and include 2 scholarly sources from the required and optional reading list addressing the following:
1. Describe the change that occurred in your workplace, and list the major steps or stages involved in this change, identifying the change model as Lewin’s three-step, Kotter’s eight-step, or the five-step approach of action research.
2. What stages were successful during this process, and which ones were problematic or handled poorly? Were the problematic or poorly handled ones seen as unethical?
3. What types of decisions had to be made by leaders? Did the decisions appear to be made in an ethical manner? What could they have done better?
4. Do you think the change process would have gone better if management used one of the other change models not used, Lewin’s three steps, Kotter’s eight steps, or the five-step approach of action research?
SLP Assignment Expectations
1. Your SLP should be at least 2-3 full-pages in length (not including title and reference pages). This means the submission must be at least 2 full pages. It must include an introduction below the paper’s title prior to the answer to the first assignment question and a Conclusion on the last page before the References list page. There should be nothing in the top left corner of the paper and only a page number in the top right corner of all pages.
2. Be sure to cite and reference (using APA Style) a minimum of 2 scholarly peer-reviewed sources listed in the Course Materials and Bibliography (Module 4 Required and Optional Reading List), in the Module 4 Background Page: Required and Optional Readings, or in the Trident Online Library (peer-reviewed journal articles)..
3. Upload your paper to the SLP 4 Dropbox before the assignment due date.
4. Include both a reference page and in-text citations. Citation and reference style instructions are available at Trident University’s Introduction to APA. Another resource is the “Writing Style Guide,” which is found under “My Resources” in the TLC portal, or the APA Manual (7th ed.).
Additional citation and reference style instructions are available at Purdue OWL (https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/10/) and Trident University’s Introduction to APA Style, 7th edition.
You will find the following useful as you critique sources:
Herring, J. E. (2011). Chapter 3: Evaluating websites, Figure 3.1, p. 38. In Improving students’ web use and information literacy: a guide for teachers and teacher librarians. Facet Publishing. Available in the Trident Online Library, EBSCO eBook Collection.
Lack, C. W., & Rousseau, J. (2016). Chapter 4: What is critical thinking? In Critical thinking, science, and pseudoscience: Why we can’t trust our brains. Springer Publishing Company. Available in the Trident Online Library, EBSCO eBook Collection.
The references found online via a tool like Google, the Trident Online Library, or even the courses may not be in correct APA format. For this reason, you are expected to research how to correctly format references. Do not just copy citations and expect them to be correct. The basic format of references are:
Author, A. B. (2020, December 25). Title of the article, Title of the Academic Journal, 55(3), 23-28.
• 55 is the volume number for this fictitious example of a perfectly formatted reference for a journal article. Article titles are never typed in italics.
Author, A. B., Bolden, C., & Cheswick, D. E. (2023). The art of leadership. John Wiley and Son.
This is the reference format for a fictitious book. Book titles never begin every word with a capital letter, but they are always typed in italics. Notice the use of an ampersand before the last listed author.
MacMillan, P. (2020). Modern paradigms of leadership [Video]. Alexander Street. Available in the Trident Online Library.
This is the reference format for a video. The video title is always in italics and is always followed by [Video]..
Module 4 – Background
MANAGING ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE
Required Reading
A good place to start are the following two videos and articles about the Lewin 3-step model and Kotter’s 8-step change process. These resources will introduce you to two of the change models covered in this module:
Caulfield, J. L., & Brenner, E. F. (2020). Resolving complex community problems: Applying collective leadership and Kotter’s change model to wicked problems within social system networks. Nonprofit Management & Leadership, 30(3), 509–524. Available in the Trident Online Library
Clayton, M. (2022, August). What is John Kotter’s 8-step change process? [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/e1VDmj1bFFY. Standard YouTube license.
EPM. (2022, March). Unfreeze, change, refreeze: Kurt Lewen’s 3-step model [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/wiPZdo2gpwY Standard YouTube license.
Kotter’s 8-step change model. Minute Tools.
Woody II, E. W. (2020). MHS genesis implementation: Strategies in support of successful EHR conversion. Military Medicine, 185(9-10), e1520-e1527. Available in the Trident Online Library.
Next, read the following articles as they relate to the five phases of Action Research:
Coghlan, D., & Shani, A. (2018). Components of Action Research. SAGE Publications Ltd, https://doi.org/10.4135/9781529716566. Read the brief section entitled “Components of Action Research.” This article can be found within the Sage Research Methods database in the Trident Library.
Duesbery, L., & Twyman, T. (2020). What are the key features of action research I should remember? In 100 questions (and answers) about action research. SAGE Publications, Inc., https://doi.org/10.4135/9781544305455. Available in the Trident Online Library, Sage Research Methods database.
The following Straker reference is a great website that has freely available information about a variety of leadership theories as well as numerous other disciplines:
Straker, D. (n.d.). (n.d.). Leadership theories. Changing Minds.
https://changingminds.org/disciplines/leadership/leadership.htm
Optional Reading
Elliott, A., & Woodward, W. (2020). Describing and examining data. (Vols. 1-0). In Quick guide to IBM® SPSS® Statistical analysis with step-by-step examples. SAGE Publications, Inc., https://doi.org/10.4135/9781071909638. Available in the Trident Online Library, SAGE Research Methods database.